Ireland Day 2 Cont'd: Kinsale

Our next stop on the zigzag tour of SW Ireland was Kinsale. Another little port town, well known for it's wonderful restaurants and quant atmosphere.

We got to Kinsale early in the evening, and it was obvious there was some event going on in town and at the marina. Which we has expected when we had encountered so many problems booking a guesthouse for the night. And explians why we wound up in the smallest bedroom ever encountered outside of Manhattan. As you can see, you really couldn't get around the bed by walking. This photo is of the entire room.

So, after we checked into our very basic, itty bitty room at the guesthouse, we walked down toward the marina. Passing the Seafarers' Memorial,

and Merlin's Keep (ok, not really anything but someone's guesthouse, probably - but Sarah thought it was amusing).
Eventually reaching Vista, this lovely little wine and tappas joint by the marina.
This little wine bar was so cute, and obviously had it's own little happy hour crowd (that's them, behind David).

After a little bite to tide us over, not to mention a few glasses of wine, we wandered back into the downtown area to find a restaurant for dinner.

Those of you who know David well know that one of his great loves in life is a fine meal. And more than that, he loves to check out menus online of everywhere we may go to eat. Planning a night out for dinner can involve serious research for him. Naturally, he had looked into restaurants in every town we had booked into on our journey. And he had lists (ok, only in his head, but still) of his top 5 places to go for meals - as well as for drinks before and after. We tried a few places he'd scoped out, but unfortunately they were so crowded they had 2 hour waits (!!), so we settled on The White House.

Even though they were also very busy, we were able to be seated and started on our basket of yummy breads and creamy butter, ordered more wine & decided on which of the seafood specials we wanted.

We lingered over our meal, going to their back patio area to grab a smoke now and again... This is David in the back... You'll notice it was still bright out when we went in, but by the time we left, night had finally fallen in Kinsale. Did I mention we lingered?

This is a view of Kinsale at night. Actually, it's the street right across from the White House and right in front of our next stop - The Armada.

The Armada was a really nice, large pub. Also very dark, so most of my photos turned out really blurry (or maybe that was the wine?). We were drinking the local brew, Kinsale Irish, and enjoying watching some folks playing Snooker or 9 Ball, or whatever it was. When they finally left, we thought we'd shoot some pool, just for kicks. Or, at least we tried to. It was pretty ugly, I have to say. We muddled through a couple of really bad games, when suddenly this man starts walking briskly through the bar shouting "FINISH! FINISH! FINISH!". And then he turned the lights over the table off. As we were shooting! It was amazing! Never seen a bar clear that fast at closing! Oh, and we should mention, this was about 11:40 pm. Because bars in Ireland close at MIDNIGHT! Alright, seriously, what is that about? And we did try a few other places, but after 11:45, not one bar would even think of serving us.

So that's how Cinderella & the mice felt... We headed back to the guesthouse, stopping to chat with a college kid who was also staying at our guesthouse, and who was headed off to the World Cup a few days later. We all eventually headed inside, wishing the rooms weren't so tiny, or there was somewhere - anywhere - open past midnight.